Dragon's Fire (15 page)

The gold turned back for a moment and nodded her head toward Pellar before turning back, taking one giant stride, and jumping into the air.

Well, they’re related to dragons, Pellar mused, so why wouldn’t they move well in midair?

He was still trying to absorb this new thought when a voice behind him cried out and he felt a rush of air. Suddenly there was a second watch-wher in the air, climbing frantically after the queen.

A rush of feet behind him alerted him in time to turn and see Aleesa come pelting toward him.

“You! Send your fire-lizard away!” she ordered. As Pellar’s brows furrowed questioningly, she added, “It’s a mating flight! You’ll not want him around.”

A mating flight? Like dragons? Pellar grabbed for Chitter and locked eyes with his brown. Chitter protested twice but finally agreed and, just after Pellar released him, vanished
between.

“Have you ever seen a mating flight?” Aleesa asked, her voice filled with a reverence that made Pellar uneasy.

Pellar shook his head.

“Have you ever
felt
a mating flight?” Aleesa asked with a hint of a leer in her voice.

Reluctantly Pellar nodded. Others were awake now and rushed out of the cave. Jaythen approached Aleesa with a wild light in his eyes and Pellar realized that the bronze watch-wher was bonded to him.

“Do you want to do this, Aleesa?” Jaythen asked, his voice rasping with barely controlled emotions. “She’s old.”

“She’ll outfly your bronze if you keep jabbering,” Aleesa replied, turning toward the younger man. She spared one last glance at Pellar. “Have Polla get the children and the others prepared and stay with them.”

Pellar nodded and ran back to the cave. He found Polla, one of the older women, already organizing the children into groups. He was surprised to see some of the younger women eyeing him consideringly.

“It’d only be for the flight,” the woman said when she caught his gaze. “Nothing more than that.”

Pellar nodded, not sure of his own feelings, and wondered how many of the children were the results of previous mating flights—he’d heard enough about them during his time at the Harper Hall.

“They’ll be needing food and warmth after the flight,” Polla warned, brusquely setting the children to play near the fire.

Who, Pellar wondered, the watch-whers, Aleesa, or the children?

“How many Turns have you, anyway?” Polla asked, regarding Pellar carefully.

Pellar hastily pulled out his slate and wrote 13.

Polla read it and laughed, nodding toward the younger woman. “Arella’s nearer your age, she’s only three Turns older.”

Pellar found it hard to believe that the other woman had only sixteen Turns; he would have guessed her nearer to thirty. Life with the watch-whers was clearly very demanding.

“Come sit by me, then,” Arella called, patting a spot near her.

Pellar crossed around the fire and had just sat, nervously, when the watch-whers mated.

Much later, Arella whispered in his ear, “Now you are one of us.”

“He is
not
one of us,” Jaythen declared loudly the next day, staring angrily at Pellar and Arella but directing his speech to Aleesa.

The old woman looked very tired. She shook her head slowly. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps not.” She cast a secretive glance toward Arella. “Time will tell.”

“Mother,” Arella said, “it was a
mating
flight. He knows.”

Knows what? Pellar wondered. That watch-whers mated? That they were enough like dragons that people felt the intensity of their emotions?

“It might be her last mating flight,” Aleesa said, her voice betraying her own fatigue and sorrow. “If there’s no queen egg…”

Pellar looked up at the mention of eggs. Jaythen and Aleesa both noted it.

“You’re here for an egg?” Jaythen demanded, towering menacingly over Pellar.

Pellar nodded.

“You would steal an egg, why?” Aleesa asked.

Pellar shook his head. He slowly drew out his slate, very aware of Jaythen’s menacing presence, and wrote, “Not steal. Trade.”

“Trade what?” Jaythen growled derisively. He turned to Aleesa. “We’ve been through his pack; he’s got nothing of value.”

Pellar kept a neutral look on his face; he’d known that they had searched his pack the first night he arrived. He had guessed that they would.

“He’d’ve hidden anything of value, Jaythen,” Arella said to the older wherhandler, not attempting to keep her sense of derision from her voice.

“What’s valuable enough for a watch-wher’s egg?” Jaythen demanded.

Pellar felt all eyes on him. Hastily he wrote, “Warmth. Fire. Fuel.”

He passed his slate to Aleesa, who looked at it and frowned, passing it on to Polla.

“Warmth, fire, fuel,” Polla reported.

It was then that Pellar realized that Aleesa couldn’t read. All the other times, he hadn’t realized that she’d let someone else read his slate because she couldn’t; he’d thought she’d done it to prove her authority.

Pellar gestured urgently for the slate. Polla passed it back to him, her brow creased in concern. Pellar made sure that no one else saw what he wrote before he passed it to Aleesa.

Aleesa frowned at it, then passed it to Polla. Polla read it, gasped, and gave Pellar a hard look. Pellar gestured for her to read it. Polla glared at him, then glanced nervously at Aleesa.

“Well?” Aleesa demanded.

“It says, ‘lessons,’” Polla reported.

Aleesa snorted. “In return for which, I’m supposed to teach you how to talk, I presume?”

Pellar stood up, backing away from Jaythen, whose attitude, if anything, had grown more frosty during the exchange. He bowed low to Aleesa, stood up again, and gestured to the children. From inside his tunic, he pulled out his pipes, mimed putting them to his lips, put them back in his tunic, and then made like he was holding a guitar.

“You claim you’re harper-trained just because you can make pipes?” Jaythen asked incredulously. He laughed derisively. “A pretty poor excuse you are for a harper if you can’t speak!”

Pellar nodded and then shook his head, cupping his ear and frowning intently.

“He hears better than those who talk,” Aleesa guessed. She laughed, and not bitterly.

“And he’s got a fire-lizard, Mother,” Arella pointed out. “If he can keep one of those, he’ll be able to bond with a watch-wher.”

Pellar shook his head emphatically and made a waving-off gesture with one hand. He retrieved his slate from Polla and wrote, “Not me.”

“Who, then?” Aleesa asked. “Would you bring a horde upon us?”

Pellar gave Aleesa a long, thoughtful look. “Good idea,” he wrote finally.

“Good idea?” Jaythen snorted when he read the slate. “What makes that a good idea?”

“Sell the eggs,” Pellar wrote. “Herdsmen, miners.”

Polla’s eyes widened when she read his response, and her tone was very thoughtful when she told Aleesa, “He’s thinking you could sell the eggs to herdsmen and miners.”

“Sell them?” Aleesa repeated. She looked at Pellar and frowned. “And what would we sell them for?”

“A year’s coal,” Arella answered immediately. She looked defiantly at her mother and then at Pellar. “The chance of an egg for a year’s supply of coal.”

“Chance?” Jaythen repeated.

“They’d have to get by Aleesk,” Arella pointed out.

Aleesa barked a laugh. “I like it!”

“The herdsmen could offer a year’s supply of food,” Polla added, looking at the youngsters huddled together by the fire.

“Or gold,” Jaythen said, his eyes glowing thoughtfully. “Better than marks: You can buy anything with gold.”

Aleesa raised a hand, silencing the group. She gave Pellar a long, appraising look.

“It’s a deal,” she said finally. Pellar’s eyes brightened until she raised her hand. “If you stay here, make the arrangements,
and
provide for your replacement as harper when the time comes.”

She held out her hand to him. “Will you do it?”

Pellar thought for a moment and then, slowly, took her hand and shook it firmly.

“Heard and witnessed!” Arella declared. From the watch-whers’ cave came a chorus of acknowledgment.

Pellar’s new duties, it seemed, didn’t absolve him of his old duties; he found himself working twice as hard. Arella’s behavior toward him was much warmer and full of playful banter, which was good, as Jaythen seemed to grow more distrustful with every new day.

So it was more than a month before Pellar found the time and the timber with which to fashion the frame of a decent drum. He started with a well-formed section of tree trunk, carefully carved out the center, and slowly expanded the hollow until the frame was only a few centimeters thick. With all the other work he had, the process took him two sevendays.

“What are you doing?” Arella asked him late one night as she watched him carefully rub a rough stone against the outside of the frame. She peered curiously around the fire in the middle of the largest cavern.

Pellar paused, carefully placing his stone tool and work to the side before dragging out his slate, on which he wrote, “Sanding.”

Arella made a face. “I see that, but why?”

Pellar looked at her, picked up the frame, and mimed pounding on the hole where a skin should be. Arella looked at him with a creased brow before she relaxed in comprehension. “You’re making a drum?”

Pellar nodded. Arella crossed around the fire in quick strides and sat down close by him. She leaned in to peer at the drum in his hands and begged, “Teach me how.”

Pellar thought for a moment, nodded, and handed her the frame and rough stone.

Arella looked down at both in awe and then looked up at Pellar. “What do I do?”

“Sand,” Pellar wrote in reply.

The next morning, Pellar set out in search of a good hide for the drum. As he trotted from one trap to the next, he suppressed his irritation at Jaythen trailing him. Grinning, he glanced back over his shoulder to where Jaythen was hiding. Rather, where Jaythen was
trying
to hide, for Jaythen’s skills were only slightly better than none at all.

Pellar had taken pains to remain easily tracked in the past several sevendays—although he occasionally applied more of his craft just to learn the limits of Jaythen’s skill. He was always careful never to lose Jaythen for too long, lest the older man guess Pellar’s true abilities.

So far, after three traps, Pellar had nothing to show for his efforts. What he really wanted was a wherry foolish to fly into one of his large aerial traps—wherhide would make an excellent drumhead—but he’d settle for one of the larger furbeasts. What he didn’t expect was half a furbeast and a busted trap. He had barely time to recognize what he was looking at before an arrow flew by his shoulder and landed near the broken trap. Pellar whirled around to see Jaythen waving at him frantically and gesturing for him to run. Pellar had only taken his first confused step when Jaythen stiffened, notched another arrow to his bow, and let it fly—straight at Pellar.

Pellar dived to the right out of the arrow’s path, landing hard on his shoulder, curling up as soon as he hit the ground, and turning around to face the sounds coming from behind him. He pulled his knife from the top of his left boot and cradled it in both hands close to his chest while coming up to a crouch, for the volume of the sound told him he was facing something big and fast. And the grunting noise told him it was a wildboar—one of the most dangerous creatures on Pern.

Pellar only had an instant to spot Jaythen’s arrow sticking out of the wildboar’s left eye before he dove to the side and flung himself atop the wildboar. It lurched under his weight and squirmed to dislodge him. Pellar wrapped his numb right arm around the beast’s haunches and dug deeply into the wildboar’s neck with his knife. The boar squealed and bucked, throwing Pellar off.

Pellar fell hard, banging his head on a rock and rolling over another with his sore shoulder. He would have screamed out loud if he could. His face pinched in pain, he grabbed the rock his head had hit on the way down and threw it at the wildboar.

“Are you mad?” Jaythen yelled in the distance. “Run!”

But Pellar shook his head, knowing that even as injured as the wildboar was, he was too slow to outrun it.